Otra vez el mar

By Reinaldo Arenas

Subjects: Cuba, fiction, Fiction, gay, Fiction, lgbtq+, gay, New York Times reviewed, Fiction

Description: Twice confiscated by Cuban authorities and rewritten from memory, this litany of despair--the story of life in totalitarian Cuba--is told through the voice of a wife (who remains nameless), then through that of her husband, Hector, a disenchanted revolutionary and poet. Hector, his wife and baby vacation for six days at a small seaside cabin. There, in feverish lyrical outbursts, they each lament the loss of the freedom they had barely begun to know in early Castro years, and with its passing the loss of everything else--enthusiasm, rebelliousness and hope. Nothing except terror remains, and as it grows, Hector and his wife's relationship becomes intolerable. Under the domestic idle chatter lie their complete solitudes, a vestige of wilted love, her disgust at the messier aspects of child care, his silent fury and homosexual desire.--From publisher description.